


We Drank A Thousand Times

by LadyShadowphyre



Series: Something Beautiful [4]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, F/M, Original Character Death(s), Soulmate AU, Soulmate-Dreams, alcohol consumption, ambiguous ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-16
Updated: 2017-06-16
Packaged: 2018-11-14 17:32:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11212860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyShadowphyre/pseuds/LadyShadowphyre
Summary: Lisa Braeden's soulmate was killed in a head-on collision two weeks before their wedding. On what would have been her wedding day, she goes to a bar to kill the pain and brings home a man who looks a hell of a lot like her Benjamin did. Dean is surprised that she doesn't want to pretend he's someone else.





	We Drank A Thousand Times

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Zetal (Rodinia)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rodinia/gifts).



> Time stamp for Lisa and Dean, takes place a year after Dean had his dream.

**I** T HURT TO breathe.

That was the constant, the recurring theme in Lisa Braeden's mind. Benjamin Colt had always left her breathless in one way or another, from whirlwind romance when he'd blown into town to howling tempests when they fought and the swirling hurricanes of sensation in their bouts of makeup sex, everything with Ben had been constant motion. And now, two weeks after his death had taken the wind from her sails, Lisa was still foundering trying to regain her momentum.

It hurt to breathe.

Such a senseless death, too, everyone said. For a man whose main form of employment was as a bounty hunter chasing down weird serial killers, no one had expected the thing to kill him to be a drunk driver on a wet road in a sleepy little town in Indiana. Lisa had been numb and disbelieving the first week through identifying the body and making the funeral arrangements - cremation and buried in a salted iron urn, for whatever reason - and it didn't really hit her until she was lowering the urn into the hole in the ground in the graveyard that he was really gone.

It hurt to fucking  _ breathe _ \--!

The bar was dim and noisy and full of complete strangers, just the way she wanted it. She dropped heavily onto a barstool next to a blonde guy in a leather jacket and ordered a double whiskey straight, no ice, no frills. She felt the shift as Leather Jacket Guy turned to stare at her, but she didn't look around at all until the bartender had put the requested drink in front of her and she slammed it back with the desperation of a woman at the end of her rope. The burn hit her like a truck, but still not hard enough to leave her as breathless as Ben's loss, and that made her set the glass down a bit harder than necessary and tap the rim for a refill before she had even opened her eyes.

"Damn," came an impressed-sounding baritone from the direction of Leather Jacket Guy. "You celebratin' or pissed off?"

"Can't it be both?" she drawled back, slanting a daring glare towards the speaker. Her eyes caught on the white teeth of a grin and she blinked hard before turning back to her new glass and sipping it a bit more slowly. The leather jacket creaked as the guy shrugged and shifted to lean against the bar facing her.

"Guess it could," he agreed. "My experience, people only drink like that if it's one or the other."

People, not women. Lisa's eyes darkened as her grip tightened on the glass hard enough to leech the blood from her knuckles. Ben had talked like that, no differentiating between men and women, just people, and before she thought better of it she said as much.

"Ain't that big a difference between men and women," the guy said with another shrug. He hesitated visibly, then asked, "Boyfriend?"

"Soulmate," Lisa muttered, staring down at the whiskey.

"He the reason you're drinking angry?" the guy said with a dangerous note to his voice. It made Lisa want to laugh, but she knew if she laughed she'd only start crying, and she couldn't do that yet. Not here.

"Sure is," she said shortly, picking up the glass. "He's dead."

"....Well, damn," Leather Jacket Guy said after a moment. Lisa snorted and lifted the glass to her lips, tilting her head back to drain it as she waited for the inevitable "I'm so sorry" that had dogged her for the last two weeks. To her surprise, he only said, "That really sucks." She almost choked on her whiskey when she started laughing in spite of herself.

"Yeah, it really does," she said when she managed to rein in the laughter before it turned into sobs like she feared. "You got a name? I can't keep calling you 'Leather Jacket Guy' in my head."

"Well, you could if you want to," the guy offered with a raspy little chuckle. "Or you could call me Dean."

"Dean, huh? I'm Lisa," she said, turning for the first time to offer him her hand and looking straight at him for the first time.

_ Oh.... _

Blond hair in a military-short cut, day old stubble along his chin, full lips stretched in that flashing white grin below glittering green eyes.... He could have been Ben's brother, younger in the face but the same bitter age about the lines of his mouth and eyes. The "hunter's look" Ben had called it once, though he never explained what he meant and she never asked.

"You wanna get out of here?" she found herself asking. The grin fell away to be replaced by a shrewd, assessing look and she scowled. "I'm not asking for forever, and I'm not such a lightweight that two doubles impairs my good sense."

"I suppose I'll have to take your word for it," Dean drawled, but the grin was back, slower and a little darker and more promising. He hesitated again. "Hotel room good? 'Cause I ain't local."

"That's fine," she said, digging into her jacket and dropping a twenty on the bar by her glass. "I'm not local, either."

Another twenty dropped beside Dean's mostly empty beer bottle and they slipped out of the dim bar into the darker night. He led her over to a shiny black classic Impala that nearly made her purr as she slid into the passenger seat. To her embarrassment, she actually did purr when he gunned the engine and the car roared and growled strong enough to send shivers through her.

"You got a powerful baby here," she said by way of an explanation. For some reason, her words made him blush and smile a little shyly.

"Yeah, well... she's home," he said with a shrug, and pulled out of the bar's parking lot. Lisa just nodded and let the silence stand. Another drifter living life on the road, then. She was starting to think having and losing Ben had given her a type.

They ended up at a seedy motel out near the highway where Lisa laughed at him and slid out of the car to go get a room for them.

"My choice, cowboy," she told him with a smirk. "Didn't anyone ever tell you to indulge a lady when she wants something?"

"Might need a refresher," he admitted, raising both eyebrows at her as he followed her into the room. "Any other indulgences, my lady? Lines I need to say for my role tonight?"

"No lines," she shook her head. "Just a little pretending."  _ Pretend that you blew through my town and swept me off my feet and found in me a reason to keep coming back even though you could never really stay. Pretend you proposed to me with with a silver ring and made me buy six pounds of salt for the cabinets for good luck. Pretend you weren't a damn fool to ride a motorcycle in the rain and get plowed off the road head-on by a drunk in a pick-up who never even slowed down. _ "Pretend tonight's our wedding night and we won't say goodbye in the morning. You good with that, Dean?"

"You gonna keep calling me Dean if I do?" he asked, looking at her askance. Lisa nodded solemnly, stepping in close to him and tilting her head up. One of his hands came up to brush her dark hair out of her face and she leaned into the touch.

"You aren't him," she said seriously, "and that's just fine. But if you think you can handle it... just for tonight, I want to pretend he'd been you."

"I can sure as hell try," he said softly, gently stroking her cheek with the rough pad of his thumb. "Do you, Lisa, take Dean Winchester to be your husband?"

"I do," she answered, mirroring him with a hand on the back of his neck. "Do you, Dean, take Lisa Braeden to be your wife?"

"I do," he said, a little more hesitant and hoarse than he probably meant to be. She smiled up at him shakily as it hit her just how far he was willing to go to pretend for her.

"Then kiss your bride, cowboy," she told him, tugging him down towards her, "and take me to bed."

They didn't talk much after that, mouths busy tracing the paths their hands took over slowly-bared flesh. Curses and praise and keening moans were exchanged and blended in turns. A frantic reach for a condom was cut short by a sharp "fuck that, I'm on the pill, get back here" followed by a breathless "yes ma'am." Moans and gasps and various iterations of "Dean" and "Lisa" culminated in a deep groan and a pleasured scream that drifted into soft hums and panted breaths.

Lisa came down from the endorphin high to find herself sprawled across Dean's well-muscled and scarred chest, his fingers stroking lazily through her hair. He was humming softly, a lilting melody that sounded just a bit familiar and just a bit more off-key. She pressed her ear to his chest, tracking the rhythm of his heartbeat as she absently tried to puzzle out the tune, but it only really hit her when he started to sing softly.

"Leaves're fallin' all around... it's time I was on my way... ow!" He slapped a hand over hers where she'd pinched a nipple and gave her a wounded look. "What, you don't like Zepplin?"

"Zepplin's fine," Lisa said soothingly, tangling their fingers together. "I'm more of a Kansas girl, though."

Dean was silent for a long moment and Lisa wondered if she'd said something wrong, something that would make him break the charade and leave her lying here alone again. Then he let out a huffed laugh, soft and ruefull, and relaxed back into the lumpy mattress again.

"As my lovely wife wishes," he said softly, and Lisa closed her eyes to hide the shine as she let her limbs go loose and easy held against his solid warmth.

_ I close my eyes... _ __  
_ Only for a moment, _ _  
_ __ And the moment's gone....

She woke the next morning to a door closing. For a moment she was disappointed, thinking that Dean had decided to slip out while she was sleeping. Footsteps in the room a moment later roused her enough to open her eyes and discover that her initial supposition had been faulty. Dean was, indeed, fully dressed for having left the hotel, but he was carrying a paper bag and two styrofoam cups that smelled strongly of coffee. He halted when he saw she was awake and ducked his head a little.

"Wasn't sure how you take it, so I brought some stuff back," he said by way of explanation. He held out one of the cups and the paper bag to her, and she took them with a sleepy mumble that could pass as thanks. The paper bag turned out to have an assortment of sugar and dry creamer along with a toasted bagel and a couple of small tubs of butter spread with a plastic knife.

"Breakfast in bed? You are an awesome husband," she declared, fishing out one of the packets of sugar and using the handle of the knife to stir it into her coffee before flipping it over to put the butter on the bagel. "You eat already?"

"Yeah, I..." Dean rubbed the back of his neck, glancing down and then back up at her. "I gotta get back on the road, but I didn't wanna just... you said you ain't local, so... I can give you a ride or something before I have to..."

"Pish, please," Lisa interrupted his awkward fumblings. "I took a cab to the bar last night. I can call a cab to take me home from here just as easily."

"Right," he muttered, looking down again. "Hey, uh... for whatever it's worth? I would'a been honored to be your soulmate, even if you ain't mine."

Something about his tone tugged at that space beneath Lisa's breastbone where her heart felt blessedly at ease for the first time in two weeks. It was on the tip of her tongue to say it, to say the words from her dream than had made Ben keep coming back. She swallowed them down and slipped out of the bed, reaching up to give him a last, lingering kiss.

"Look me up sometime if you're ever in Cicero," she said softly as she stepped back, then gave him a stern frown. "And don't go getting yourself killed doing something incurably stupid, you hear me?"

"Yes, ma'am," Dean said with that same bright grin he'd given her the night before. It was just as dazzling in daylight. She followed him to the door and stood in the window with the dingy curtain wrapped around her, sipping her coffee as the Impala roared to life and he pulled away from the motel and out of her life again.

"You're a goddamn werewolf, Dean Winchester," she murmured wistfully to the receding tail lights. "'Cause you're ripping out my damn fool heart."

**Author's Note:**

> The title and first song Dean sings are from Led Zepplin's "Ramble On", which is a highly appropriate song but perhaps not the best thing to sing to the woman you're supposed to be pretending is your wife. XD The italicized lyrics are from "Dust In The Wind" by Kansas, which makes for a better lullaby than the iconic "Carry On Wayward Son".


End file.
